Preschool Teacher Burnout Prevention

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Problem
Review of Literature
Research Procedure
Expected Result
References

Abstract

Teaching has been established as a stressful job, especially for teachers of very young children at the preschool level. This study attempts to gather information from preschool teachers about stress factors involved in their jobs and what possible ways may be done to manage the stress. This Qualitative study aims to come up with a design for a Stress Management Program for preschool teachers to be presented to school administrators in support of their greatest asset – their teachers. It is believed that in doing so, schools are able to have more efficient teachers who can provide a better quality of service to their preschool students.

Problem

Due to the multiple roles, a preschool teacher plays in the execution of her job, how can she be able to handle the stress that comes with it? This paper attempts to come up with solutions to the problem by taking the insights and suggestions of preschool teachers.

Review of Literature

Young children are at a very delicate stage in their lives when they are so impressionable. Any experience or interaction will somehow leave a mark on their thinking, feeling, and personality development. Adults around them should be careful in their dealings with such young children and the life experiences they expose these little ones too.

Preschool teachers hold significant roles in the lives of their students. They are in a position to be influential in the early learning and development of children. Teaching is indeed a very fulfilling career. However, with it comes great responsibility and a whole lot of stress.

Generally, stress is what one feels when the demands on his life exceed his ability to meet those demands. The stressor may be external, such as too much workload, meeting deadlines, or a sudden change in activity level. Or, it may be an internal stressor such as an illness. For teachers, teaching-related stress can affect their health, well-being, and performance, which have great effects on the school. This may translate to unproductive teacher behaviors like alienation, apathy, and absenteeism (Gugliemi and Tatrow, 1998).

The article of Tsai, Fung, and Chow (2006) studied sources and manifestations of stress in female kindergarten teachers and found out that teacher stress comes from a variety of factors. The findings of their study revealed that preschool teacher stress sources are: Time Management-related, Work-related, Professional-related, Discipline and Motivation-related, and Professional Investment-related. Work-related Stressors include feelings of having too little time to prepare, having too much work, the pace of school day being too fast, class size too big, personal priorities being shortchanged, and having too much administrative paperwork, whereas Time Management includes feelings such as having to do more than one thing at a time, being rushed in speech, and not having enough time to get things done. Professional related may be relationships with co-teachers. Discipline and motivation-related may be in handling the preschool-aged children, and professional-investment related may be the professional development activities teachers need to attend such as training, meetings, and seminars. Kelly and Berthelsen (1995) did a study with preschool teachers documenting their day for two weeks and identified their sources of stress as child behavior problems, workload and time pressures, working conditions, and relationships with colleagues. These were reflected in the multiple tasks a preschool teacher needs to do in a day. Role overload is common with preschool teachers because not only are they expected to come up with a curriculum for the class and implement it, they deal with the management of the class, considering the developmental characteristics, individual personalities and backgrounds of the children, concerns of the parents, meeting requirements of the school administration, planning school events, and even non-teaching related tasks such as clerical work and entertaining visitors and business agents.

Tsai, Fung, and Chow (2006) also reported that findings from early studies on health-related problems associated with teacher stress indicated that the negative effects of stress could range from minor physical symptoms such as mouth sores to more serious psychopathological symptoms like depression and suicidal ideations.

Their study revealed the five types of stress manifestations as Emotional, Fatigue, Cardiovascular, Gastronomical, and Behavioral. Sample experiences for each type of stress manifestation are as follows: “Feeling depressed,” “Sleeping more than usual,” “Feelings of increased blood pressure,” “Stomach cramps,” and “Using alcohol” (Tsai, Fung and Chow, 2006). These symptoms can eventually lead to “burnout” as their motivation and enthusiasm for their work wanes.

The term “burnout” is a relatively new term, first coined in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger in his book “Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement”. He originally defined ‘burnout’ as “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results” (Scott, 2007). While burnout is not a recognized clinical psychiatric or psychological disorder, there are some similar features between burnout and diagnosable conditions such as depression, anxiety disorders, or mood disorders.

This graph shows the pressure curve in relation to a worker’s efficiency and the continuum of work pressure. It shows that a person’s efficiency is maximized when the pressure is just right. However, if it continues to increase, then performance suffers as worker experiences burn-out (Greenberger and Strasser, 1986).

“Emotional exhaustion results when an imbalance occurs between the emotional demands of work and the personal psychological resources available to fuel the energy to meet such demands. Thus, to the extent that the effort required depletes one’s energy and emotions, the result is feelings of estrangement from self (Hochschild, 1983; Leiter, 1993) and emotional exhaustion” (Wilk & Moynihan, 2005).

Based on various literature (Greenberger and Strasser, 1986; Neils, n.d., Scott, 2007 among others), the following are representatives of burnout symptoms:

Depleted Physical Energy: Prolonged stress can be physically draining, causing one to feel tired much of the time or no longer have the energy she once did. Getting out of bed to face another day of the same gets more difficult.
Emotional Exhaustion: One feels impatient, moody, inexplicably sad, or just gets frustrated more easily than one normally would. She feels like you can’t deal with life as easily as she once could.
Lowered Immunity to Illness: When stress levels are high for a prolonged amount of time, the immune system does suffer. People who are suffering from burnout usually get the message from their body that something needs to change, and that message comes in the form of increases in susceptibility to colds, the flu, and other minor illnesses (and sometimes some not-so-minor ones such as heart attacks and high blood pressure).
Less Investment in Interpersonal Relationships: Withdrawing somewhat from interpersonal relationships is another possible sign of burnout. One may feel like she has less to give, or less interest in having fun, or just less patience with people. But for whatever reason, people experiencing burnout can usually see the effects in their relationships.
Increasingly Pessimistic Outlook: When experiencing burnout, it’s harder to get excited about life, harder to expect the best, harder to let things roll off your back, and harder to ‘look on the bright side’ in general. Because optimism is a great buffer for stress, those suffering from burnout find it harder to pull out of their rut than they normally would.
Increased Absenteeism and Inefficiency at Work: When experiencing job burnout, it gets more difficult just to get out of bed and face more of what’s been overwhelming you in the first place. This may be an unconscious defense against burnout, but those experiencing it tends to be less effective overall and stay home from work more often. (This could also be due to increased illness resulting from lowered immunity, as discussed above.) This is part of why it makes sense for workers to take some time off before they’re feeling burned out and why it makes sense for employers to refrain from running their workers into the ground; they might not get back up so quickly!

“As stress can reduce a teacher’s motivation and ultimately affects the operation of the school and teaching (Brownell, 1997), perhaps kindergarten principals can assist teachers in managing their stress by providing them with better resource support, and principals can also search for means to curtail administrative procedures so as to

allow teachers to work at a pace that they find more manageable.” (Tsai, Fung, and Chow, 2006). Also, the working environment should encourage support from colleagues. Relaxation strategies are also essential in preventing burnout.

This paper attempts to design a Stress Management program as suggested by the prospective teachers in the sample based on their own contexts. Its goal is to help preschool teachers deal with their work stress so that they become more effective workers and provide better service to the preschool teachers they serve.

Research Procedure

In the article by Kelly and Berthelsen (1995), it was discussed that a qualitative study could garner more information regarding the subjects’ real insights and feelings, as it allows them to delve deeper into the research questions involved. “Bogdan and Biklen (1982) proposed that the worth of a study is the degree to which it generates description and understanding. Keeping a personal document such as a reflective journal is an effective method of acquiring such description and understanding. A personal document is any self-revealing record that intentionally or unintentionally yields information regarding the structure, dynamics, and functioning of the author’s life (Woods, 1986). Woods also noted that documents which have a strong personal investment provide indicators of the participants’ views and attitudes and may contain much more information than can be acquired by other means.” (Kelly & Berthesen, 1995).

The Kelly & Berthelsen study required preschool teachers to journalize their daily tasks and experiences in their preschool work, and from there, gather the necessary data to identify stress factors.

For this proposal, Interviews of at least 20 preschool teachers regarding stress and probable strategies to de-stress them will be conducted. The following guide questions shall provide structure for the interviews:

What do you think are the factors that cause stress in your work as a preschool teacher and why?
What do you think can be done to lessen your stress?
Do you have any suggestions as to how the school administration can support you in lessening the stress in your job so you would be a more efficient preschool teacher?

Although there are guide questions, interviews shall still be free-flowing to allow the subjects to freely express their ideas and opinions genuinely.

Responses of the interviewees shall be analyzed by categorizing them into themes and organizing their suggestions into a Stress Management Program to be presented to school administrators for their consideration.

Expected Result

Based on the realities preschool teachers will report in the foregoing interviews regarding how stress affects them, a program for stress management shall be designed for preschool teachers to be proposed to management as it will also benefit them. It will consider all factors, including work-related load, parent relations, relationships with co-workers, administrative tasks, etc.

This Stress Management Program is valuable, especially in the field of Early Childhood Education, because it will greatly support the teachers of the youngest students in their hard work in helping raise a better generation of learners.

References

Bogdan, R.C. & Biklen, S.K. (1982). Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theory and Methods. Toronto: Allyn and Bacon.

Brownell, M. (1997). “Coping with stress in the special education classroom.” Teaching Exceptional Children, 30, 6.

Greenberger, D. B. and Strasser, S. (1986). “Developing and application of a model of personal control in organizations’” Academy of Management Review, 11, 164±177

Guglielmi, S.R. and Tatrow, K. (1998). “Occupational stress, burnout, and health in teachers: A methodological and theoretical analysis.” Review of Educational Research, 68, 61-91.

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Kelly, A., L and Berthelsen, D. C (1995) “Preschool teachers’ experience of stress.” Teaching and Teacher Education 11(4):345-357.

Leiter, M. (1993). “Burnout as a development process: Consideration of models”. In W.Schaufeli, C.Maslack, & T.Marek (Eds.), Professional burnout: Recent developments in theory and research (pp. 237–250). Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis.

Neils, H. (n.d.) “13 signs of burnout and how to help you avoid it “.

Scott, E. (2007),“Stress and burnout: burnout symptoms and causes”. Web.

Tsai, E., Fung, L. & Chow, L. (2006) “Sources and manifestations of stress in female kindergarten teachers” International Education Journal, 2006, 7(3), 364-370.

Wilk, S.L., & Moynihan, L.M. (2005), “Display rule ‘regulators’: the relationship between supervisors and worker emotional exhaustion.”Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol.90 (5) pp. 917-927

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